I received my first spam post on this blog recently.
I made a post about the new heating my landlord has installed and the spam post was basically vaguely aimed at trying to look like a post but then giving a link to some random plumbing company.
I always wonder about things like that - has the company set up its own spambot? Or have they hired someone to do it? Perhaps they've paid some company to get them a higher ranking in Google or other search engines and it's therefore crawling around spamming links in order to achieve that for them (page rankers tend to include numbers of links in their algorithms).
Certainly the fact it was a link to a plumbing company and my post was about something to plumbing (central heating is plumbed in) suggests it was a bot crawling around fro relevant content to spam on.
I have comment moderation turned on of course. I can't say I was expecting vast quantities of spam or loads of nasty comments or anything, but I figured it was better safe than sorry.
As for the plumbing in question, it continues to be a mixed bag.
It comes on slightly too late in the morning and probably goes off slightly to early at night for it to suit me perfectly. And it's still a bit random whether it comes on and how hot it comes on when it does.
The radiator seems to be very effective at heating the room and bedsit generally, although it doesn't actually get very hot to the touch. It is quite a big radiator with a lot of surface area, so I would guess it relates to that - it transfers the heat to the room very well, rather than getting hot itself.
However it has definitely saved me money - there have been quite a few days I'm sure I would have turned my own heating on but the radiator took care of that.
As I say, it doesn't quite come on during when I need it, so I have turned it on a couple of times and on the couple of occasions it's been super cold as well, but even then I've only tended to have it on for a little while and not at full blast.
So yeah, it's save me a bit of money. Indeed, I think it will probably pay for itself, especially if we get a proper cold spell. There were predictions of a cold snap for pre-Christmas, but that doesn't really seem to have happened as it's been very mild for the time of year.
I'm still hearing predictions of super cold temperatures for the post-Chrimbo period, though, and given the last two years have been horribly cold I'm still expecting the worst.
Thursday, 1 December 2011
Wednesday, 30 November 2011
battle: los angeles
Now here's a difficult review.
I'd heard that Battle: Los Angeles was an awful film. And it is. But I actually kinda enjoyed it.
One of the clichés of Hollywood is that when they pitch movies, they do so by going "it's x meets y". So, for example, a film might be "top gun meets love actually" or whatever.
Well, battle is basically that - it's Independence Day meets Black Hawk Down. Well, there are other elements in there, like Civilians, but that's basically it - aliens invade and we follow some regular marines who end up essentially surrounded and besieged on all sides.
So it's not particularly imaginative as a concept, but it's also very poorly written in practice.
The problem is that it's crammed so full of clichés it almost groans with them. If you've seen lots of war films then you can just about predict what is going to happen in any given scene and what the people are going to say. It's so bad it somehow contrives to make you actively disinterested in the characters where it's trying to make you care for them.
It's also odd how it's playing out a kind of mini version of independence day. So where the idea of that film was that it was a deliberately over-the-top and big budget alien invasion B movie, here they've taken the same basic plot and scaled it back, but kept the enormous budget. So instead of stepping back to a proper B movie you end up with a big movie with a terrible script and hackneyed plot.
Even the thing that's meant to be something different - the fact it's filmed hand-held - I've seen dozens of time before. In fact isn't nearly every war film since Private Ryan filmed like that? It's almost become a cliché (who'd have thunk it?).
It's also weirdly jingoistic (as in "America - Fuck Yeah!"), but it's a jingo-ism directed against aliens who we learn so little about that we can't hate them. It's like it's trying to make you hate the aliens because they're not the stars of the film, rather than giving any particular reason for them to be considered "bad".
Okay, there's some voice-over bits that imply they're here purely to wipe us out in order to grab our water, but why? I'd have loved it if the film had pulled the rug out from underneath itself by suddenly revealing at the end that in orbit was a ship full of women and children aliens who were all dying of thirst. But it's not that clever a film.
Indeed, it manages to come up with some intriguing concepts for the aliens - the foot soldiers have weapons bonded to them and they look like they might be cyborgs. Their air power is central controlled using drones - but why is that? Can the foot soldiers not be trusted with ait power?
Certainly you end up with a weird contradiction that this appears to be an alien race geared for intergalactic pillaging and war with super powerful weapons, yet the foot soldiers are generally poor shots and seem very poorly organised, given that central control idea.
And yet despite all of the above, I actually secretly kinda enjoyed the film.
I think what probably happened was that there was so much action and it was so well done and I was just in the right frame of mind for a dumb action film that I ended up enjoying it from a pure spectacle point of view.
I certainly don't think it's a good film.
I'd heard that Battle: Los Angeles was an awful film. And it is. But I actually kinda enjoyed it.
One of the clichés of Hollywood is that when they pitch movies, they do so by going "it's x meets y". So, for example, a film might be "top gun meets love actually" or whatever.
Well, battle is basically that - it's Independence Day meets Black Hawk Down. Well, there are other elements in there, like Civilians, but that's basically it - aliens invade and we follow some regular marines who end up essentially surrounded and besieged on all sides.
So it's not particularly imaginative as a concept, but it's also very poorly written in practice.
The problem is that it's crammed so full of clichés it almost groans with them. If you've seen lots of war films then you can just about predict what is going to happen in any given scene and what the people are going to say. It's so bad it somehow contrives to make you actively disinterested in the characters where it's trying to make you care for them.
It's also odd how it's playing out a kind of mini version of independence day. So where the idea of that film was that it was a deliberately over-the-top and big budget alien invasion B movie, here they've taken the same basic plot and scaled it back, but kept the enormous budget. So instead of stepping back to a proper B movie you end up with a big movie with a terrible script and hackneyed plot.
Even the thing that's meant to be something different - the fact it's filmed hand-held - I've seen dozens of time before. In fact isn't nearly every war film since Private Ryan filmed like that? It's almost become a cliché (who'd have thunk it?).
It's also weirdly jingoistic (as in "America - Fuck Yeah!"), but it's a jingo-ism directed against aliens who we learn so little about that we can't hate them. It's like it's trying to make you hate the aliens because they're not the stars of the film, rather than giving any particular reason for them to be considered "bad".
Okay, there's some voice-over bits that imply they're here purely to wipe us out in order to grab our water, but why? I'd have loved it if the film had pulled the rug out from underneath itself by suddenly revealing at the end that in orbit was a ship full of women and children aliens who were all dying of thirst. But it's not that clever a film.
Indeed, it manages to come up with some intriguing concepts for the aliens - the foot soldiers have weapons bonded to them and they look like they might be cyborgs. Their air power is central controlled using drones - but why is that? Can the foot soldiers not be trusted with ait power?
Certainly you end up with a weird contradiction that this appears to be an alien race geared for intergalactic pillaging and war with super powerful weapons, yet the foot soldiers are generally poor shots and seem very poorly organised, given that central control idea.
And yet despite all of the above, I actually secretly kinda enjoyed the film.
I think what probably happened was that there was so much action and it was so well done and I was just in the right frame of mind for a dumb action film that I ended up enjoying it from a pure spectacle point of view.
I certainly don't think it's a good film.
Tuesday, 29 November 2011
back up
Before I went away I did a bit of a back-up.
I've got some USB hard drives I use for backing up everything. This can take ages to do, as I've the best part of a terabyte of stuff to back up. In all honest, I therefore tend to do an incremental back-up on some of it.
For most I delete the old backups and redo the whole lot, but for other folders where I know I've not changed anything I keep them as is. If I've only done a few small changes I try to identify where they are and transfer those over.
I've come to this process after some real horrendous backups in the past. My machines are obviously quicker nowadays, so that helps, but previously it has taken days to copy things across when I've just done the whole lot. This time it took about half a day, most of which was just setting it going.
I also tend to use my laptop nowadays, so it doesn't tie up my main machines. I can do this because I use a single large hard drive to store most of my stuff on. I do have stuff on hard drives on my machines, but every week I ensure I move or back-up everything to the remote HDD.
I also try to keep a secondary back-up of the important things on CD & DVD. Mostly this is things like scans, but there's some other stuff on there too. This was the part of the process I didn't manage to do during my last holiday. I will, however, make sure to do a full back-up at Christmas.
Indeed, I may well do a refresh of my back-ups on CD & DVD. recordable CDs & DVD apparently have a lifetime on them of about six years or so. I don't think I've ever had any actually degrade, but after I heard this I decided to redo the back-ups every so often, as loosing the content would be a disaster.
Also, because recordable media is so cheap and easy to get nowadays it's hardly a massive cost.
Backing stuff up is really important. I've lost loads of stuff before because I didn't have proper backups.
My dad also recently learned this lesson as he lost almost all the pictures he had taken as part of his trip to the Canadian Grand Prix. He basically transferred the stuff to his computer and then deleted it from the camera memory card. He then was trying to process the pictures and (I really don't know why) was using the recycle bin as kind of storage area.
There's loads of errors there:
To be fair I hadn't gotten him fully set up to do back-ups yet, but then why was he forging ahead with fiddling about with stuff until I had?
Of course they say you only really learn some lessons after you've had the disaster, and I think he's learned his lesson.
I've got some USB hard drives I use for backing up everything. This can take ages to do, as I've the best part of a terabyte of stuff to back up. In all honest, I therefore tend to do an incremental back-up on some of it.
For most I delete the old backups and redo the whole lot, but for other folders where I know I've not changed anything I keep them as is. If I've only done a few small changes I try to identify where they are and transfer those over.
I've come to this process after some real horrendous backups in the past. My machines are obviously quicker nowadays, so that helps, but previously it has taken days to copy things across when I've just done the whole lot. This time it took about half a day, most of which was just setting it going.
I also tend to use my laptop nowadays, so it doesn't tie up my main machines. I can do this because I use a single large hard drive to store most of my stuff on. I do have stuff on hard drives on my machines, but every week I ensure I move or back-up everything to the remote HDD.
I also try to keep a secondary back-up of the important things on CD & DVD. Mostly this is things like scans, but there's some other stuff on there too. This was the part of the process I didn't manage to do during my last holiday. I will, however, make sure to do a full back-up at Christmas.
Indeed, I may well do a refresh of my back-ups on CD & DVD. recordable CDs & DVD apparently have a lifetime on them of about six years or so. I don't think I've ever had any actually degrade, but after I heard this I decided to redo the back-ups every so often, as loosing the content would be a disaster.
Also, because recordable media is so cheap and easy to get nowadays it's hardly a massive cost.
Backing stuff up is really important. I've lost loads of stuff before because I didn't have proper backups.
My dad also recently learned this lesson as he lost almost all the pictures he had taken as part of his trip to the Canadian Grand Prix. He basically transferred the stuff to his computer and then deleted it from the camera memory card. He then was trying to process the pictures and (I really don't know why) was using the recycle bin as kind of storage area.
There's loads of errors there:
- he'd deleted the version on the memory card (!)
- he was working on the versions he'd transferred to the machine, instead of making copies and working on those
- he was using the recycle bin as a temp folder (!)
- he hadn't made and sort of back-up
To be fair I hadn't gotten him fully set up to do back-ups yet, but then why was he forging ahead with fiddling about with stuff until I had?
Of course they say you only really learn some lessons after you've had the disaster, and I think he's learned his lesson.
Monday, 28 November 2011
a swift Brazilian
This weekend saw the last Grand Prix for the year in Brazil.
Usually Brazil is a good race and while I wouldn't classify this last weekend's as a great race, it was certainly among the better ones this year.
There were a few interesting battles and overtaking manoeuvres and there were some strong strategic elements to the race. Also it's an interesting circuit, and is very fast, so it's always an enjoyable race to watch.
There was a lot of talk of rain - something that crops up fairly often in Brazil due to the time of year it's normally held - but it never actually happened.
However, there were a lot of people having problems with their gearboxes, which was a bit weird. My guess is it was because everyone was at the edge of the lifetime for their gearboxes, but still, it was a bit weird.
Overall it's been an interesting season, with the Pirelli tyres really throwing the proverbial cat amongst the pigeons at the beginning. The team's seemed to have gotten a better handle on things later into the season, but it's still helped lead to interesting racing.
The added element of DRS was an interesting experiment, but it didn't really seem to work as advertised, either not helping overtaking at all or making it far too easy. KERS is difficult to know if that really helped or not - my guess is it did, but was still too underpowered to really have a huge effect.
The unfortunate thing this year was the Seb seemed to be the total master of the tyres from the get-go where everyone else struggled, and he was also in the best car, so he just romped away with it. Hopefully with few rule changes next year things will be a bit more interesting in terms of the championship, but I wouldn't want to guarantee it.
Red Bull still have bar far and away the best designer in F1 and in Seb they have a guy who can pull spectacular laps out of the bag on demand, therefore tending to put the best car on the front of the grid - always a difficult thing to get the better of. The Red Bull has also been staggeringly reliable, with I think Seb only having any sort of technical issue in the last two races of the season.
It really is a winning combination and it doesn't seem likely their suddenly going to loose form over the winter season. Certainly it's going to be up to the other guys to take the fight to them.
But the odd thing about the year was that, despite the championship being a bit dull, the actual races were generally rather good. I guess the trouble was that they were good much further down the field than the man in front.
Usually Brazil is a good race and while I wouldn't classify this last weekend's as a great race, it was certainly among the better ones this year.
There were a few interesting battles and overtaking manoeuvres and there were some strong strategic elements to the race. Also it's an interesting circuit, and is very fast, so it's always an enjoyable race to watch.
There was a lot of talk of rain - something that crops up fairly often in Brazil due to the time of year it's normally held - but it never actually happened.
However, there were a lot of people having problems with their gearboxes, which was a bit weird. My guess is it was because everyone was at the edge of the lifetime for their gearboxes, but still, it was a bit weird.
Overall it's been an interesting season, with the Pirelli tyres really throwing the proverbial cat amongst the pigeons at the beginning. The team's seemed to have gotten a better handle on things later into the season, but it's still helped lead to interesting racing.
The added element of DRS was an interesting experiment, but it didn't really seem to work as advertised, either not helping overtaking at all or making it far too easy. KERS is difficult to know if that really helped or not - my guess is it did, but was still too underpowered to really have a huge effect.
The unfortunate thing this year was the Seb seemed to be the total master of the tyres from the get-go where everyone else struggled, and he was also in the best car, so he just romped away with it. Hopefully with few rule changes next year things will be a bit more interesting in terms of the championship, but I wouldn't want to guarantee it.
Red Bull still have bar far and away the best designer in F1 and in Seb they have a guy who can pull spectacular laps out of the bag on demand, therefore tending to put the best car on the front of the grid - always a difficult thing to get the better of. The Red Bull has also been staggeringly reliable, with I think Seb only having any sort of technical issue in the last two races of the season.
It really is a winning combination and it doesn't seem likely their suddenly going to loose form over the winter season. Certainly it's going to be up to the other guys to take the fight to them.
But the odd thing about the year was that, despite the championship being a bit dull, the actual races were generally rather good. I guess the trouble was that they were good much further down the field than the man in front.
Sunday, 27 November 2011
index of screwocity
Obviously I don't generally blog over the weekend, but the beeb announced just how badly they're going to screw us F1 fans on Friday night, so I figured a special blog was warranted.
My overall feeling is that the news is very mixed.
Firstly, they've announced two types of highlights packages - a 90minute version and a 120minute version. Obviously we will have to wait and see what this actually means, but in theory they could actually show all of the race is a 120minute "highlight" package, because races are limited to 120minutes.
In reality guess is that really this means that the 90min package will feature half an hour of flannel (the "analysis" stuff) and then 30 mins f racing and the 120min package will also have 30mins of flannel and 90 mins of racing.
~The other announcement is a bit weird in that it says those races in the "eastern time zone" will be the 120mins and those in the "European time zone" will be 120mins. This is complicated because some races are shown in the evening/night in order to bring them into the European time zone.
But also, of more importance, what about the races in the "western time zone", which is to say those races in Canada and Texas, but also Australia - what time zone is that in?
So really it's about as clear as mud as to how good/bad the highlights will be. Certainly I'm slightly relieved that they also seem to be saying that they will be showing a separate highlights show for qualifying.
But what about the races they will be showing in full?
This is where it become a real mixed bag.
The first thing to note is that there is a new race next year - Austin. There's some doubt if it will go ahead, but what it does mean is I have no idea if it will be any good or not. Also, on a similar note, although Bernie insists Bahrain will go ahead, it might not; however, it has been run before so I do have some idea how good it will be.
What I've done is compile the date, location, type of coverage (full or highlights) and my personal rating (a score out of 5 so 1=awful, 2=poor, 3=okay, 4=good, 5=great). It should of course go without saying that other people's opinions will vary (well, except for Valencia - everyone hates Valencia) and by showing half as highlights they were never going to be able to please everyone (not even people who hate the sport, because they're still showing it).
So here's how it breaks down:
date race coverage rating
18-Mar Australian high 4
25-Mar Malaysian high 3
15-Apr Chinese full 4
22-Apr Bahrain high 2
13-May Spanish full 2
27-May Monaco full 1
10-Jun Canadian high 5
24-Jun European full 1
08-Jul British full 5
22-Jul German high 3
29-Jul Hungarian high 2
02-Sep Belgian full 5
09-Sep Italian high 3
23-Sep Singapore full 1
07-Oct Japanese high 5
14-Oct Korean full 4
28-Oct Indian high 3
04-Nov Abu Dhabi full 2
18-Nov United States high unknown
25-Nov Brazilian full 5
Now obviously the BBC has a bit of a difficult job in that presumably they want to have a bit of a spread of full coverage of races across the year, but then as you can see from my scores, it's not like all the great races are one after another - they're generally quite spread out.
An easy way of highlighting my point about it being mixed is if you simply add the scores for the highlights and for full races you get 30 points in each case. However, if you include Austin as a presumed average, the highlight scores is just about the full race score. Sol we're getting screwed, but only just.
The real problem is highlighted by the great races and the awful races:
The picture for the great races is like this:
race coverage
British full
Belgian full
Brazilian full
Canadian high
Japanese high
So we get 3 of the five great races in full. But note we don't get Canada or Japan. Who the hell though that was a good idea? Especially when you look at the picture for the awful races:
race coverage
Monaco full
European full
Singapore full
So we're getting full coverage of all three of the races that are awful. I mean okay, I can understand Monaco, it has the tradition and all that, but the European Grand Prix? Valencia? Seriously? I mean, even with the new tyres, DRS and KERS it was fucking awful. Plus they're showing Spain in full? What - did the BBC fancy a couple of holidays on the Costa Del Sol? And we get these instead of Canada, which was by far one of the best races this year and is almost always good.
And Singapore? Oh, right, but that's the race at night, and there we see the exact thing I was afraid of.
Singapore - night (and street) race in full.
Bahrain - evening race in full.
European - street race in full.
Monaco - street race in full.
The "novelty factor" has had too much sway. At least some sense has prevailed - we get Belgium and Brazil (they'd have to show the British Grand Prix, so that was a given).
What makes this worse is Canada is right before the European Grand Prix and Japan is right after Singapore!
But what about the middling ranks? Well we get China & Korea but not Australia and we get none of the races I've given a 3 to (Malaysia, Italy, India and Spain). We also get half of the races I've given twos too.
Which pretty much brings me back to the point - it's going to be a real mixed bag.
My overall feeling is that the news is very mixed.
Firstly, they've announced two types of highlights packages - a 90minute version and a 120minute version. Obviously we will have to wait and see what this actually means, but in theory they could actually show all of the race is a 120minute "highlight" package, because races are limited to 120minutes.
In reality guess is that really this means that the 90min package will feature half an hour of flannel (the "analysis" stuff) and then 30 mins f racing and the 120min package will also have 30mins of flannel and 90 mins of racing.
~The other announcement is a bit weird in that it says those races in the "eastern time zone" will be the 120mins and those in the "European time zone" will be 120mins. This is complicated because some races are shown in the evening/night in order to bring them into the European time zone.
But also, of more importance, what about the races in the "western time zone", which is to say those races in Canada and Texas, but also Australia - what time zone is that in?
So really it's about as clear as mud as to how good/bad the highlights will be. Certainly I'm slightly relieved that they also seem to be saying that they will be showing a separate highlights show for qualifying.
But what about the races they will be showing in full?
This is where it become a real mixed bag.
The first thing to note is that there is a new race next year - Austin. There's some doubt if it will go ahead, but what it does mean is I have no idea if it will be any good or not. Also, on a similar note, although Bernie insists Bahrain will go ahead, it might not; however, it has been run before so I do have some idea how good it will be.
What I've done is compile the date, location, type of coverage (full or highlights) and my personal rating (a score out of 5 so 1=awful, 2=poor, 3=okay, 4=good, 5=great). It should of course go without saying that other people's opinions will vary (well, except for Valencia - everyone hates Valencia) and by showing half as highlights they were never going to be able to please everyone (not even people who hate the sport, because they're still showing it).
So here's how it breaks down:
date race coverage rating
18-Mar Australian high 4
25-Mar Malaysian high 3
15-Apr Chinese full 4
22-Apr Bahrain high 2
13-May Spanish full 2
27-May Monaco full 1
10-Jun Canadian high 5
24-Jun European full 1
08-Jul British full 5
22-Jul German high 3
29-Jul Hungarian high 2
02-Sep Belgian full 5
09-Sep Italian high 3
23-Sep Singapore full 1
07-Oct Japanese high 5
14-Oct Korean full 4
28-Oct Indian high 3
04-Nov Abu Dhabi full 2
18-Nov United States high unknown
25-Nov Brazilian full 5
Now obviously the BBC has a bit of a difficult job in that presumably they want to have a bit of a spread of full coverage of races across the year, but then as you can see from my scores, it's not like all the great races are one after another - they're generally quite spread out.
An easy way of highlighting my point about it being mixed is if you simply add the scores for the highlights and for full races you get 30 points in each case. However, if you include Austin as a presumed average, the highlight scores is just about the full race score. Sol we're getting screwed, but only just.
The real problem is highlighted by the great races and the awful races:
The picture for the great races is like this:
race coverage
British full
Belgian full
Brazilian full
Canadian high
Japanese high
So we get 3 of the five great races in full. But note we don't get Canada or Japan. Who the hell though that was a good idea? Especially when you look at the picture for the awful races:
race coverage
Monaco full
European full
Singapore full
So we're getting full coverage of all three of the races that are awful. I mean okay, I can understand Monaco, it has the tradition and all that, but the European Grand Prix? Valencia? Seriously? I mean, even with the new tyres, DRS and KERS it was fucking awful. Plus they're showing Spain in full? What - did the BBC fancy a couple of holidays on the Costa Del Sol? And we get these instead of Canada, which was by far one of the best races this year and is almost always good.
And Singapore? Oh, right, but that's the race at night, and there we see the exact thing I was afraid of.
Singapore - night (and street) race in full.
Bahrain - evening race in full.
European - street race in full.
Monaco - street race in full.
The "novelty factor" has had too much sway. At least some sense has prevailed - we get Belgium and Brazil (they'd have to show the British Grand Prix, so that was a given).
What makes this worse is Canada is right before the European Grand Prix and Japan is right after Singapore!
But what about the middling ranks? Well we get China & Korea but not Australia and we get none of the races I've given a 3 to (Malaysia, Italy, India and Spain). We also get half of the races I've given twos too.
Which pretty much brings me back to the point - it's going to be a real mixed bag.
Friday, 25 November 2011
final grand prix
This weekend sees the final race of 2011 at Interlagos in Brazil.
The championship was decided a while ago of course and it's actually fairly rare that it comes down to the wire, so since Brazil is normally towards the end, usually it's been decided before then.
The place where the race is in Brazil is not a particularly nice area, as I understand it. Brazil has a lot of poor people and big slum areas, and I believe the track is close to one of those.
This usually leads to someone getting robbed or mugged or something similar. This usually makes the headlines, but the media generally reports it as crime, rather than focusing a spotlight on the poverty. I mention this specifically because in India that was clearly the angle they'd gone for - F1 is profligate and rich but India's poor, so do the Indians really want it?
It's a ludicrous argument of course.
Football is wasteful and rich, with big British team players being paid ludicrous salaries and tickets costing a small fortune, but I don't hear anyone saying there shouldn't be football allowed in India.
And any sort of argument that anyone can play football is only on slightly firmer ground. Okay, very few people ever become F1 drivers, but then few ever become premier league players of football. And there's lots of motor racing people can have a go at, from rallying to carting.
Anyway, got sidetracked a bit there.
Brazil is usually a really good race. The circuit has always had lots of opportunities to pass and it's not uncommon for it to rain and make things a bit complex for the teams. I'll be interested to see what happens with things like DRS and KERS - could this be a track where they're not really needed? Could they make things silly in terms of passing and repassing, etc?
The race will be on fairly late in the evening as it's run on local time, which is always interesting.
I will hopefully also go and get a haircut at some point this weekend. It's really becoming something of a mop head at the moment.
And I'll also hopefully be able to get some more stuff on e-bay. I put a lot of the DVDs I ripped up there last weekend. I thought about putting some up that I hadn't ripped, but it's always risky doing that.
I've done it before with things I hadn't quite finished, and if something happens it can be very tricky. The obvious example this time is not finding the time, but I've also had problems ripping some of the DVDs and while I sorted them, that suggests there's a risk of delay or finding one that just won't rip at all.
The championship was decided a while ago of course and it's actually fairly rare that it comes down to the wire, so since Brazil is normally towards the end, usually it's been decided before then.
The place where the race is in Brazil is not a particularly nice area, as I understand it. Brazil has a lot of poor people and big slum areas, and I believe the track is close to one of those.
This usually leads to someone getting robbed or mugged or something similar. This usually makes the headlines, but the media generally reports it as crime, rather than focusing a spotlight on the poverty. I mention this specifically because in India that was clearly the angle they'd gone for - F1 is profligate and rich but India's poor, so do the Indians really want it?
It's a ludicrous argument of course.
Football is wasteful and rich, with big British team players being paid ludicrous salaries and tickets costing a small fortune, but I don't hear anyone saying there shouldn't be football allowed in India.
And any sort of argument that anyone can play football is only on slightly firmer ground. Okay, very few people ever become F1 drivers, but then few ever become premier league players of football. And there's lots of motor racing people can have a go at, from rallying to carting.
Anyway, got sidetracked a bit there.
Brazil is usually a really good race. The circuit has always had lots of opportunities to pass and it's not uncommon for it to rain and make things a bit complex for the teams. I'll be interested to see what happens with things like DRS and KERS - could this be a track where they're not really needed? Could they make things silly in terms of passing and repassing, etc?
The race will be on fairly late in the evening as it's run on local time, which is always interesting.
I will hopefully also go and get a haircut at some point this weekend. It's really becoming something of a mop head at the moment.
And I'll also hopefully be able to get some more stuff on e-bay. I put a lot of the DVDs I ripped up there last weekend. I thought about putting some up that I hadn't ripped, but it's always risky doing that.
I've done it before with things I hadn't quite finished, and if something happens it can be very tricky. The obvious example this time is not finding the time, but I've also had problems ripping some of the DVDs and while I sorted them, that suggests there's a risk of delay or finding one that just won't rip at all.
Thursday, 24 November 2011
downton abbey & other telly stuff
While I was away I saw this Downton Abbey people seem to have gone nuts for.
I can't honestly say I understand why it's so popular. It seemed very poorly written and had an odd, staccato feel to it - like all the scenes were filmed with the intention of being the last in the show, or just before an ad break.
You know the drums you get at the end of Eastenders and there's that dramatic pause while they play? All of the scenes seemed like that in Downton.
Also, the camerawork was very sedate, with mostly static shots, so it had a feel of only having 1 camera, which usually goes along with a low budget, but it clearly had some money spent on it. It looked very lush - lots of lovely costumes and old cars and stuff.
But as I say, the story was very languid and it seemed daft. It also seemed a bit theatrical - you know that way in which things are a little bit hammy in theatre sometimes, because they're having to emote to a big room? It felt a bit like that.
I wasn't keen at all, to be honest.
There's still no sign on Total Wipeout's return to the telly. The latest series of QI is well past half way and Have I got News for You is back again, so it's well into the autumn season, but there's no sign of it.
I ended up suspecting I'd actually missed the series, but I did some investigating and my theory about them showing the celeb specials (which were clearly intended as the last thing in the series run) and nothing else appears to be correct.
I'd have thought if they were planning to run it up to Christmas they'd have started by now and Chrimbo is only 5 or 6 weeks away.
There's been a brilliant new wildlife series on BBC one all about the frozen bits of the world (the far north and south). I actually got to watch the first episode at home and at my Dads. This is significant because my Dad has recently purchased a gigantic High Definition TV and has Freesat HD (basically the satellite version of digital telly - he used to have Sky so already had the dish).
It really looked good in HD and again made me think about getting a freeview HD box. I've decided against it for a while at least, because the analogue signal isn't being turned off for me until April 2012.
It seems to have taken ages for the switchover to happen where I am. I'm pretty sure it was originally planned for 2010, but then got pushed back.
It's a real pain because I'm just on the cusp of a receivable signal. Indeed, if it weren't for my brilliant Humax box I probably couldn't watch digital. My telly has freeview built in, but it can't really get a very good signal. But as I say, it's just on the cusp - sometimes it will be okay, sometimes it will break up a little bit and sometimes it will be so bad you can't tell there's any picture at all.
I did identify that the plug on the arial was in pretty poor condition, so redid it and the signal quality improved massively, but strength was basically unaffected. When they switch off analogue they will turn up the strength of the digital - they can't set it to "max" at the moment as it would interfere with the analogue.
After that I will probably look again at getting HD. Another issue will be that, while my telly is a nice size for my room and the space I have available, it won't really make full use of HD. I mean, I can see the benefit a bit when I watch Blu-Ray movies, but I'd need a bit bigger telly to really get the full effect, and so it's quite an expensive proposition.
Lastly, the Big Bang Theory is back on... but I unfortunately didn't realise and have missed the first couple of episodes :(.
The problem was that it's come back to E4, but doesn't appear to have been shown on channel 4 yet. Usually (or at least, my memory is) they show new episodes first on E4 and then repeat them a week later on channel 4, but this time they seem to have just started showing them on E4 without the repeats.
As such, I've only realised because the new series of the Mentalist started and I was like "hang on, shouldn't the Big Bang Theory be on too?" so I did a search on the old PVR and eventually worked out the new series was already 4 episodes in.
I say eventually because there isn't a day when E4 aren't showing multiple (old) episodes of Big Bang - they repeat it like they used to Friends - so finding new ones is a tricky task.
I can't honestly say I understand why it's so popular. It seemed very poorly written and had an odd, staccato feel to it - like all the scenes were filmed with the intention of being the last in the show, or just before an ad break.
You know the drums you get at the end of Eastenders and there's that dramatic pause while they play? All of the scenes seemed like that in Downton.
Also, the camerawork was very sedate, with mostly static shots, so it had a feel of only having 1 camera, which usually goes along with a low budget, but it clearly had some money spent on it. It looked very lush - lots of lovely costumes and old cars and stuff.
But as I say, the story was very languid and it seemed daft. It also seemed a bit theatrical - you know that way in which things are a little bit hammy in theatre sometimes, because they're having to emote to a big room? It felt a bit like that.
I wasn't keen at all, to be honest.
There's still no sign on Total Wipeout's return to the telly. The latest series of QI is well past half way and Have I got News for You is back again, so it's well into the autumn season, but there's no sign of it.
I ended up suspecting I'd actually missed the series, but I did some investigating and my theory about them showing the celeb specials (which were clearly intended as the last thing in the series run) and nothing else appears to be correct.
I'd have thought if they were planning to run it up to Christmas they'd have started by now and Chrimbo is only 5 or 6 weeks away.
There's been a brilliant new wildlife series on BBC one all about the frozen bits of the world (the far north and south). I actually got to watch the first episode at home and at my Dads. This is significant because my Dad has recently purchased a gigantic High Definition TV and has Freesat HD (basically the satellite version of digital telly - he used to have Sky so already had the dish).
It really looked good in HD and again made me think about getting a freeview HD box. I've decided against it for a while at least, because the analogue signal isn't being turned off for me until April 2012.
It seems to have taken ages for the switchover to happen where I am. I'm pretty sure it was originally planned for 2010, but then got pushed back.
It's a real pain because I'm just on the cusp of a receivable signal. Indeed, if it weren't for my brilliant Humax box I probably couldn't watch digital. My telly has freeview built in, but it can't really get a very good signal. But as I say, it's just on the cusp - sometimes it will be okay, sometimes it will break up a little bit and sometimes it will be so bad you can't tell there's any picture at all.
I did identify that the plug on the arial was in pretty poor condition, so redid it and the signal quality improved massively, but strength was basically unaffected. When they switch off analogue they will turn up the strength of the digital - they can't set it to "max" at the moment as it would interfere with the analogue.
After that I will probably look again at getting HD. Another issue will be that, while my telly is a nice size for my room and the space I have available, it won't really make full use of HD. I mean, I can see the benefit a bit when I watch Blu-Ray movies, but I'd need a bit bigger telly to really get the full effect, and so it's quite an expensive proposition.
Lastly, the Big Bang Theory is back on... but I unfortunately didn't realise and have missed the first couple of episodes :(.
The problem was that it's come back to E4, but doesn't appear to have been shown on channel 4 yet. Usually (or at least, my memory is) they show new episodes first on E4 and then repeat them a week later on channel 4, but this time they seem to have just started showing them on E4 without the repeats.
As such, I've only realised because the new series of the Mentalist started and I was like "hang on, shouldn't the Big Bang Theory be on too?" so I did a search on the old PVR and eventually worked out the new series was already 4 episodes in.
I say eventually because there isn't a day when E4 aren't showing multiple (old) episodes of Big Bang - they repeat it like they used to Friends - so finding new ones is a tricky task.
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
tron legacy
I seem to recall quite a lot of negative reviews for tron legacy when it came out. However, looking at the page on Wikipedia it describes critical reaction as "mixed".
I think that probably sums up my opinion of it too - mixed.
I can't honestly say I've watched tron in a while. I have seen it quite a few times over the years, but I guess with it being from the very early 80s it's not something they tend to show much any more.
If I'm honest, I don't really remember the plot, as such. I remember the awesome, innovative and clever visuals once it goes inside the computer world, I remember the games (the light cycles and disc battles) and I remember the sound, which had the dull and flat quality, like it was set in a foam box.
I do also remember it was riddled with clever little 'puns' and usage of names - programs and users being good example, but also that the whole inside world cleverly parodied (if that's the word) the outside world.
So what about this sequel?
Well, the plot was bobbins. It was such a generic action film plot that was so predictable as to be almost painful. It was like they'd taken a big book of Hollywood movie plot ideas and just transferred them into the film.
But as I say, I'm not entirely sure the original tron was up to much cop in terms of plot anyway.
The visuals were amazing.
Well, generally amazing. They'd done something to produce a young Jeff Bridges and the results were okay, but a little freaky. Now as it happened this kinda worked with the character in question, but it still looked a little off to me.
The games part of it also still worked well. They'd taken the basic ideas if the games and amped them up to the next level. This was rather in keeping with how games computer work - sequels are often the same basic concept (or, indeed, exactly the same game) but with more bells and whistles.
And the sound was great - more because of a storming sound track by the Chemical Brothers (turns out it was actually Daft Punk - groups that use keyboards really aren't my bag :/) than any particular overall clever strategy, but it still worked.
The thing that didn't really seem to have made it through and that I really missed was the clever ideas. I'll give you a specific example.
In the real world at the beginning the encom corporation is launching its latest operating system and the main character sneaks in and plays a tick on them. Fair enough, but in the meeting of the board (which was weird - you'd normally expect a big launch party, but whatever) there's this young guy who's meant to be the son of the first film's bad guy and he's also a bit of a bell end.
But when they go into the digital world, rather than him being the bad guy or, indeed, involved in any way, it's all about the old tron mythos.
Now there are justifications for this, but you could easily have made it so that they weren't issues. Indeed, a plot along those lines may have worked a bit better.
I think that probably sums up my opinion of it too - mixed.
I can't honestly say I've watched tron in a while. I have seen it quite a few times over the years, but I guess with it being from the very early 80s it's not something they tend to show much any more.
If I'm honest, I don't really remember the plot, as such. I remember the awesome, innovative and clever visuals once it goes inside the computer world, I remember the games (the light cycles and disc battles) and I remember the sound, which had the dull and flat quality, like it was set in a foam box.
I do also remember it was riddled with clever little 'puns' and usage of names - programs and users being good example, but also that the whole inside world cleverly parodied (if that's the word) the outside world.
So what about this sequel?
Well, the plot was bobbins. It was such a generic action film plot that was so predictable as to be almost painful. It was like they'd taken a big book of Hollywood movie plot ideas and just transferred them into the film.
But as I say, I'm not entirely sure the original tron was up to much cop in terms of plot anyway.
The visuals were amazing.
Well, generally amazing. They'd done something to produce a young Jeff Bridges and the results were okay, but a little freaky. Now as it happened this kinda worked with the character in question, but it still looked a little off to me.
The games part of it also still worked well. They'd taken the basic ideas if the games and amped them up to the next level. This was rather in keeping with how games computer work - sequels are often the same basic concept (or, indeed, exactly the same game) but with more bells and whistles.
And the sound was great - more because of a storming sound track by the Chemical Brothers (turns out it was actually Daft Punk - groups that use keyboards really aren't my bag :/) than any particular overall clever strategy, but it still worked.
The thing that didn't really seem to have made it through and that I really missed was the clever ideas. I'll give you a specific example.
In the real world at the beginning the encom corporation is launching its latest operating system and the main character sneaks in and plays a tick on them. Fair enough, but in the meeting of the board (which was weird - you'd normally expect a big launch party, but whatever) there's this young guy who's meant to be the son of the first film's bad guy and he's also a bit of a bell end.
But when they go into the digital world, rather than him being the bad guy or, indeed, involved in any way, it's all about the old tron mythos.
Now there are justifications for this, but you could easily have made it so that they weren't issues. Indeed, a plot along those lines may have worked a bit better.
Tuesday, 22 November 2011
audible burning
I discovered a little problem with audible and itunes the other week.
Basically, I like to listen to audio books while I'm walking. I found music difficult to walk to as the tempo mismatch was disruptive. The best audio books to listen to are autobiographies and non-fiction, as they tend to be in the form of little stories and you don't have a big plot to follow.
Anyway, I use audible, which is run by amazon. The prices are really good (you get a book a month for your subscription, which is only about £7 and they're constantly running special offers. Also, it operates entirely through download, which is nice and convenient.
When I first started using it I did have some issues. Firstly, they have their own proprietary format, so most programs can't use it. secondly, the manager software that allows you to play the files is horribly flaky. It actually looks really naff - like a "my first application" thing you'd put together when learning C++ - and has poor functionality and constantly crashed.
But also, although they allow you to burn a copy of the audio book to CD, you can only do so via itunes. I hate itunes with a passion, so this is horrible, but also you can only burn a copy of the book once. SO if it goes wrong, you can't simply retry it.
I do understand this, as they need to be careful with pirating, etc, but there should be a simpler mechanism for redoing it if it fucks up.
Fucks up like it did a while ago.
What I tend to do is take advantage of the offers and buy a chunk of audio books at one time. I also stack these up with my cheap subscription book and then burn and rip them all at once (you burn them as a standard audio CD, so you can then rip them to your heart's content!) and I did that last weekend (which, given how much other stuff I was doing, I'm not sure).
Anyway, I burned the CDs in one go on Saturday and then went to rip them all on Sunday.. and discovered some of them were totally silent. Initially I thought maybe I'd turned the volume down, but no, it turned out there was nothing but 80 minutes of silence on each CD.
After some quick investigating I discovered that this is a know problem with itunes 10.5 and audible "format 4" files and the "solution" was to use another format (format 3, which is slightly poorer quality). Initially I was worried because of the issue of only being able to burn them once, but I guess that applies to each format, or maybe they've lifted it temporarily while they fix the problem.
It was actually on the audible site I found out about the issue, but they've not actually announced it, so I Wonder how many people have been affected?
What was also weird about it was that it was random - some of the books all of the CDs had burned fine, some none of them had burned at all and others it was just one or two of the CDs.
All very weird and obviously it cost me money in the sense that blank CDs aren't free and I wasted quite a bit of time, but now I know for future reference at least.
Basically, I like to listen to audio books while I'm walking. I found music difficult to walk to as the tempo mismatch was disruptive. The best audio books to listen to are autobiographies and non-fiction, as they tend to be in the form of little stories and you don't have a big plot to follow.
Anyway, I use audible, which is run by amazon. The prices are really good (you get a book a month for your subscription, which is only about £7 and they're constantly running special offers. Also, it operates entirely through download, which is nice and convenient.
When I first started using it I did have some issues. Firstly, they have their own proprietary format, so most programs can't use it. secondly, the manager software that allows you to play the files is horribly flaky. It actually looks really naff - like a "my first application" thing you'd put together when learning C++ - and has poor functionality and constantly crashed.
But also, although they allow you to burn a copy of the audio book to CD, you can only do so via itunes. I hate itunes with a passion, so this is horrible, but also you can only burn a copy of the book once. SO if it goes wrong, you can't simply retry it.
I do understand this, as they need to be careful with pirating, etc, but there should be a simpler mechanism for redoing it if it fucks up.
Fucks up like it did a while ago.
What I tend to do is take advantage of the offers and buy a chunk of audio books at one time. I also stack these up with my cheap subscription book and then burn and rip them all at once (you burn them as a standard audio CD, so you can then rip them to your heart's content!) and I did that last weekend (which, given how much other stuff I was doing, I'm not sure).
Anyway, I burned the CDs in one go on Saturday and then went to rip them all on Sunday.. and discovered some of them were totally silent. Initially I thought maybe I'd turned the volume down, but no, it turned out there was nothing but 80 minutes of silence on each CD.
After some quick investigating I discovered that this is a know problem with itunes 10.5 and audible "format 4" files and the "solution" was to use another format (format 3, which is slightly poorer quality). Initially I was worried because of the issue of only being able to burn them once, but I guess that applies to each format, or maybe they've lifted it temporarily while they fix the problem.
It was actually on the audible site I found out about the issue, but they've not actually announced it, so I Wonder how many people have been affected?
What was also weird about it was that it was random - some of the books all of the CDs had burned fine, some none of them had burned at all and others it was just one or two of the CDs.
All very weird and obviously it cost me money in the sense that blank CDs aren't free and I wasted quite a bit of time, but now I know for future reference at least.
Monday, 21 November 2011
through the barrier
For the last few months (since around summer, in fact - so the best part of the last six months) I’ve been struggling.
I've been struggling to make it below the 19 stone mark.
19 stone doesn't represent anything in particular. It doesn't signify a shift in my BMI from one category to another. It doesn't represent any particular milestone (well, give or take it's about vaguely half way to my hoped for target weight).
But it did seem to present me with a particular barrier I just didn't seem to be able to overcome. As such I've been hovering around in a sort of limbo between 19 stone and 19 and a half stone for all that time.
The issue has been my diet. Generally what's been happening is I've been having random days where I was on my diet, but then other days where I'd slip and eat lots of bad stuff.
Also, generally speaking, I would have to buy lots of said bad stuff (for example a packet of x, as that's what they come in) so I'd then be locked in to eating that bad stuff for several days to come.
I'd also then loose my commitment - having slipped up a bit I'd then fail to come back properly on course ("well, if I'm going to slip, I might as well just not bother this week at all") and so the week would end up with me either not loosing weight or gaining weight.
Oh, there'd be weeks I would loose weight, but those were always been balanced by weeks I'd gain.
Well, last week I finally told myself I was being silly and decided to adjust things to try to get below 19 stone. What I did in particular was make an upward tweak to my walking (I walked quickly round the industrial estate after work) and also stick as close as I could to the diet and not slip.
I also deliberately bought some more and different breakfast cereals so that I could have them as a snack instead of the more destructive types of things I was having (chocolate cakes or whatever was replaced with breakfast cereals).
Anyway, upshot was I got past the 19 stone barrier. Indeed, it was a bit of a gangbusters week in that I actually lost around 4 pounds, which is similar to what I used to loose when I started this process.
I guess what it really proves to me is that I can still loose the weight, I just need to stick to the diet and exercise (who'd have thunk it?!).
I've been struggling to make it below the 19 stone mark.
19 stone doesn't represent anything in particular. It doesn't signify a shift in my BMI from one category to another. It doesn't represent any particular milestone (well, give or take it's about vaguely half way to my hoped for target weight).
But it did seem to present me with a particular barrier I just didn't seem to be able to overcome. As such I've been hovering around in a sort of limbo between 19 stone and 19 and a half stone for all that time.
The issue has been my diet. Generally what's been happening is I've been having random days where I was on my diet, but then other days where I'd slip and eat lots of bad stuff.
Also, generally speaking, I would have to buy lots of said bad stuff (for example a packet of x, as that's what they come in) so I'd then be locked in to eating that bad stuff for several days to come.
I'd also then loose my commitment - having slipped up a bit I'd then fail to come back properly on course ("well, if I'm going to slip, I might as well just not bother this week at all") and so the week would end up with me either not loosing weight or gaining weight.
Oh, there'd be weeks I would loose weight, but those were always been balanced by weeks I'd gain.
Well, last week I finally told myself I was being silly and decided to adjust things to try to get below 19 stone. What I did in particular was make an upward tweak to my walking (I walked quickly round the industrial estate after work) and also stick as close as I could to the diet and not slip.
I also deliberately bought some more and different breakfast cereals so that I could have them as a snack instead of the more destructive types of things I was having (chocolate cakes or whatever was replaced with breakfast cereals).
Anyway, upshot was I got past the 19 stone barrier. Indeed, it was a bit of a gangbusters week in that I actually lost around 4 pounds, which is similar to what I used to loose when I started this process.
I guess what it really proves to me is that I can still loose the weight, I just need to stick to the diet and exercise (who'd have thunk it?!).
Friday, 18 November 2011
dvd burning
I really need a haircut, but I doubt I'm going to get the chance this weekend.
In fact I know I won't get the chance, as I need to do loads of washing and I do that first thing Saturday, so I won't be able to go to the hairdresser's early, which is my usual slot. Plus it's a cleaning weekend and that takes up all day Saturday anyway.
I'm a bit sick of this new pattern of doing stuff - it's kinda burdensome. It was sparked because of my desire to save a bit of money (well, more like not be ripped off so badly) on getting my washing done. This hasn't worked out too well, because I'm pretty sure my local laundrette charges a lot more for use of washing machines and tumble dryers than the place I used to get my washing done via service wash.
So although I'm not paying for the service wash and I'm able to adjust the payment base don size of load and how much drying it needs, the extra expense of the wash itself kinda wipes that out.
It also has the issue that it now sucks up a total of about two hours of my time on the days I do it. This is quite a bit of time, and because I'm doing it first thing (so I can get easy access to tumble dryers) it blocks me from doing other stuff.
I've actually considered going and doing it after work or late on - the place is open pretty late, but I dunno. A big problem there is I never seem to have much time in the evening anyway (I go to bed pretty early) and I've no guarantees it will be any easier. I'd also be worried about getting finished before it closes.
I think the whole BBC loosing full rights to coverage of all the races may be a blessing in disguise, as it could free up a lot of spare time.
Anyway, that wasn't what I wanted to talk about. What I wanted to cover was how my adventure with ripping DVDs is going.
Last weekend was actually stupidly busy. There was all the GP stuff to watch, but I also decided I was going to process some audio books (more on that another day) and see about ripping the DVDs.
I mentioned this a little while ago and I've been investigating options. The one that I thought I'd try was by slysoft and there are two parts. Firstly they have a bit of software that allows you to watch any region locked DVD and then there's another bit of software you can use to clone/copy DVDs.
Both are available on free trial, so I downloaded them and gave them a go.
Results were pretty good. Initially I tried it out on my laptop. My theory was that this will be a convenient way of doing it - I can position my laptop to keep an eye on the progress of the rip and burn while I watch TV or whatever in the evening.
It worked well. My laptop DVD isn't the quickest, but it took about 45 minutes to rip and burn a DVD containing a complete series of the show peep show. I think it took less time burning a film, but I didn't pay attention tot eh time.
There was a problem with one disk I tried, but I didn't experiment to see if this was solvable. The software has various options and it's very easy to use. The only difficult is working out what's what ("title 2" doesn't mean anything, but it has a preview thing so you can see what it s).
It wasn't quite as successful when I tried it on my proper PC. The issue was that it failed to burn at a decent speed, although I've had this problem before and I think it's more to do with the drive itself. This meant it wasn't any quicker on the desktop, so I think laptop is the ay to go.
As I've said before it's a little daft if you think about it - why not spend that time watching the stuff instead of ripping it? Well, I can still watch other stuff and it's way quicker ripping than watching - that 45 minutes was for a series with 6 half hour episodes, 3 of which had commentaries and about 45 minutes of other extras, so time wise it's better.
So yeah, I think I may actually purchase this software, with the hopes that it will quickly pay for itself via e-bay selling.
In fact I know I won't get the chance, as I need to do loads of washing and I do that first thing Saturday, so I won't be able to go to the hairdresser's early, which is my usual slot. Plus it's a cleaning weekend and that takes up all day Saturday anyway.
I'm a bit sick of this new pattern of doing stuff - it's kinda burdensome. It was sparked because of my desire to save a bit of money (well, more like not be ripped off so badly) on getting my washing done. This hasn't worked out too well, because I'm pretty sure my local laundrette charges a lot more for use of washing machines and tumble dryers than the place I used to get my washing done via service wash.
So although I'm not paying for the service wash and I'm able to adjust the payment base don size of load and how much drying it needs, the extra expense of the wash itself kinda wipes that out.
It also has the issue that it now sucks up a total of about two hours of my time on the days I do it. This is quite a bit of time, and because I'm doing it first thing (so I can get easy access to tumble dryers) it blocks me from doing other stuff.
I've actually considered going and doing it after work or late on - the place is open pretty late, but I dunno. A big problem there is I never seem to have much time in the evening anyway (I go to bed pretty early) and I've no guarantees it will be any easier. I'd also be worried about getting finished before it closes.
I think the whole BBC loosing full rights to coverage of all the races may be a blessing in disguise, as it could free up a lot of spare time.
Anyway, that wasn't what I wanted to talk about. What I wanted to cover was how my adventure with ripping DVDs is going.
Last weekend was actually stupidly busy. There was all the GP stuff to watch, but I also decided I was going to process some audio books (more on that another day) and see about ripping the DVDs.
I mentioned this a little while ago and I've been investigating options. The one that I thought I'd try was by slysoft and there are two parts. Firstly they have a bit of software that allows you to watch any region locked DVD and then there's another bit of software you can use to clone/copy DVDs.
Both are available on free trial, so I downloaded them and gave them a go.
Results were pretty good. Initially I tried it out on my laptop. My theory was that this will be a convenient way of doing it - I can position my laptop to keep an eye on the progress of the rip and burn while I watch TV or whatever in the evening.
It worked well. My laptop DVD isn't the quickest, but it took about 45 minutes to rip and burn a DVD containing a complete series of the show peep show. I think it took less time burning a film, but I didn't pay attention tot eh time.
There was a problem with one disk I tried, but I didn't experiment to see if this was solvable. The software has various options and it's very easy to use. The only difficult is working out what's what ("title 2" doesn't mean anything, but it has a preview thing so you can see what it s).
It wasn't quite as successful when I tried it on my proper PC. The issue was that it failed to burn at a decent speed, although I've had this problem before and I think it's more to do with the drive itself. This meant it wasn't any quicker on the desktop, so I think laptop is the ay to go.
As I've said before it's a little daft if you think about it - why not spend that time watching the stuff instead of ripping it? Well, I can still watch other stuff and it's way quicker ripping than watching - that 45 minutes was for a series with 6 half hour episodes, 3 of which had commentaries and about 45 minutes of other extras, so time wise it's better.
So yeah, I think I may actually purchase this software, with the hopes that it will quickly pay for itself via e-bay selling.
Thursday, 17 November 2011
liverpool
So what was this mention about Liverpool all about then?
Well, it was a trip for work and it was very interesting. Unfortunately, I can’t really tell you any details about the reason for the trip and what we did, but what I did want to talk about was the journey.
It was, to be frank, rather horrible.
I basically set off at 8AM and got back at about 9PM.
I went by train and went via London. This was good in that the journey was simple (single train journey, up the northern line, single train journey) but it did make it slightly longer. In particular I ended up having to wait at the station on the way up and the way back, adding a good hour to the total journey time.
Getting back at 9PM wasn’t great - it was a horribly long day and I obviously didn’t get to bed until something like 11PM. And of course, being Thursday, I went to work on Friday. I tried to sleep in, but failed, to be honest.
I did, however, go home from work early, but then I was achieving very little at work because I was so tired.
You may be detecting a bit of a negative tone to this post, and that’s really directed at the journey and the day and its aftermath, rather than reason for the trip. That was very interest, but as I say, it’s not really appropriate for me to talk about.
But also, the negative tone is there because, well, I did really badly with my diet last week, and while it would be wrong to blame the trip, it was a big part of the cause.
I ended up gaining two pounds, which was very disappointing, especially as that was the amount I lost on my holiday. I was actually a little surprised it wasn’t more, which kinda shows me just how much exercise I had and energy I burnt off with the trip. The problem was I massively overcompensated.
In particular I ate loads of junk (5 big chocolate bars, for example). This was because I was just so tired by the time I was heading home, which was when the slide really took hold. IF I’d managed to maintain some willpower I’d have lost eight, but once I reached that low point I just ate crap in the afternoon and evening and then on Friday I ate crap too.
This was partly because of an effect I’ve noticed before where as soon as my diet slips, I’ll jut keep on “being naughty” until the end of the week. But also, because, as noted I was shattered on Friday, I just felt like eating lots of comfort food (Another big area of problem of me).
Well, it was a trip for work and it was very interesting. Unfortunately, I can’t really tell you any details about the reason for the trip and what we did, but what I did want to talk about was the journey.
It was, to be frank, rather horrible.
I basically set off at 8AM and got back at about 9PM.
I went by train and went via London. This was good in that the journey was simple (single train journey, up the northern line, single train journey) but it did make it slightly longer. In particular I ended up having to wait at the station on the way up and the way back, adding a good hour to the total journey time.
Getting back at 9PM wasn’t great - it was a horribly long day and I obviously didn’t get to bed until something like 11PM. And of course, being Thursday, I went to work on Friday. I tried to sleep in, but failed, to be honest.
I did, however, go home from work early, but then I was achieving very little at work because I was so tired.
You may be detecting a bit of a negative tone to this post, and that’s really directed at the journey and the day and its aftermath, rather than reason for the trip. That was very interest, but as I say, it’s not really appropriate for me to talk about.
But also, the negative tone is there because, well, I did really badly with my diet last week, and while it would be wrong to blame the trip, it was a big part of the cause.
I ended up gaining two pounds, which was very disappointing, especially as that was the amount I lost on my holiday. I was actually a little surprised it wasn’t more, which kinda shows me just how much exercise I had and energy I burnt off with the trip. The problem was I massively overcompensated.
In particular I ate loads of junk (5 big chocolate bars, for example). This was because I was just so tired by the time I was heading home, which was when the slide really took hold. IF I’d managed to maintain some willpower I’d have lost eight, but once I reached that low point I just ate crap in the afternoon and evening and then on Friday I ate crap too.
This was partly because of an effect I’ve noticed before where as soon as my diet slips, I’ll jut keep on “being naughty” until the end of the week. But also, because, as noted I was shattered on Friday, I just felt like eating lots of comfort food (Another big area of problem of me).
Wednesday, 16 November 2011
cod: mw3
Yesterday I mentioned I’d talk about Liverpool tomorrow, because today I’m going to give a few thoughts on call of duty: modern warfare 3.
I went into the weekend wondering what I was going to do, but then MW3 turned up and basically absorbed a whole chunk of my spare time. MW3 is the third in the modern warfare series and I played through the whole campaign and a few of the spec ops missions over the weekend.
It looks as great as ever, although I have to say the basic graphics engine doesn’t seem hugely different to that used across the rest of the series, but then I think there’s a very good reason for that.
You see, the modern warfare series is really one thing in three parts. The first was done in such a way that a sequel wasn’t essential (presumably in case it was a flop) and so it was actually a bit of surprise that mw2 picked up directly after mw. Indeed, I wasn’t hugely keen as it had been so long since the first part I felt a bit disjointed.
I don’t know for sure, but the gap seemed smaller this time. Even if it wasn’t, I was prepared for a direct sequel this time, so I didn’t get that same disjointedness.
But, more importantly, it occurs to me that the call of duty games pre-cod used to have really long single player campaigns. The campaigns in the mw series have actually been pretty short. I mean they’re not so short as to not be enjoyable, but certainly I can remember it taking several weeks to get through the campaigns in the old cod series, where the mw series you could play the entire campaign in a single lengthy session if you wanted.
I guess it helps them make he games “bigger” in the sense of being more complex set pieces and stuff, but it’s also a way of getting more cash for the same amount of story.
One thing that the cod series has always used in pre-scripted sequences. These always work well and I like them, but I will admit they're quite old hat. Also the other thing they do that is very old school is enemy spawn points and waves of enemy.
The idea is you keep moving forward and thereby pass points that switch these off and if you remember that you can lessen the effect, but it’s still very old hat. It’s also quite old hat that the levels are very fixed, guiding you along a single path through them. This last one I also don’t mind, though.
Anyway, overall I quite liked it. I thought the story was a little simpler his time compared to mw2, which actually helped. It also seemed to come to a pretty solid conclusion, so I’m guessing if there is a MW4 it will be a different story.
So yeah, enjoyable enough, but could have been a bit longer.
I went into the weekend wondering what I was going to do, but then MW3 turned up and basically absorbed a whole chunk of my spare time. MW3 is the third in the modern warfare series and I played through the whole campaign and a few of the spec ops missions over the weekend.
It looks as great as ever, although I have to say the basic graphics engine doesn’t seem hugely different to that used across the rest of the series, but then I think there’s a very good reason for that.
You see, the modern warfare series is really one thing in three parts. The first was done in such a way that a sequel wasn’t essential (presumably in case it was a flop) and so it was actually a bit of surprise that mw2 picked up directly after mw. Indeed, I wasn’t hugely keen as it had been so long since the first part I felt a bit disjointed.
I don’t know for sure, but the gap seemed smaller this time. Even if it wasn’t, I was prepared for a direct sequel this time, so I didn’t get that same disjointedness.
But, more importantly, it occurs to me that the call of duty games pre-cod used to have really long single player campaigns. The campaigns in the mw series have actually been pretty short. I mean they’re not so short as to not be enjoyable, but certainly I can remember it taking several weeks to get through the campaigns in the old cod series, where the mw series you could play the entire campaign in a single lengthy session if you wanted.
I guess it helps them make he games “bigger” in the sense of being more complex set pieces and stuff, but it’s also a way of getting more cash for the same amount of story.
One thing that the cod series has always used in pre-scripted sequences. These always work well and I like them, but I will admit they're quite old hat. Also the other thing they do that is very old school is enemy spawn points and waves of enemy.
The idea is you keep moving forward and thereby pass points that switch these off and if you remember that you can lessen the effect, but it’s still very old hat. It’s also quite old hat that the levels are very fixed, guiding you along a single path through them. This last one I also don’t mind, though.
Anyway, overall I quite liked it. I thought the story was a little simpler his time compared to mw2, which actually helped. It also seemed to come to a pretty solid conclusion, so I’m guessing if there is a MW4 it will be a different story.
So yeah, enjoyable enough, but could have been a bit longer.
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
plumbing / heater
While I was away my landlord had a radiator fitted to my room.
I’m pretty sure I mentioned this before I went, but if not, basically he’s increasing my rent by £5 a month and for that I’m getting a radiator in my bedsit area. It’s plumbed into my landlord’s heating, so I don’t have any control over it (well, I can turn it on/off and I can adjust the “balance” - whatever that is) but it’s better than an increase and getting nothing in return.
Last week was therefore the first week I’ve been experiencing it and the results are mixed, if I’m honest.
The weather has been quite mild, so it's difficult to know just how much they have their radiators on, but there’s a bit of an “all or nothing” effect. When the radiator is on, it’s very effective, but it doesn’t really come on when I would have it on.
It’s been okay in the morning (a little later than I get up) but it soon warms the place up when it’s on. In the evening, it’s on before I come back, so I get back to a somewhat warm flat. However, it’s a bit unpredictable if it’ll stay on all evening or just for an hour or so.
So some days it turns off and I have to put my own radiator on, other nights it’s stayed on right until I go to bed.
The effectiveness of the radiator is partly a function of its size. It’s a lot bigger than I was expecting, which means it really pumps it out when it’s on, but it also takes up a heck of a lot of wall space, which I wasn’t expecting. Indeed, I’ve ended up re-arranging everything and moving my bed across to the other side of the room.
I’ve still got the other radiator of course, and so my bed is up against that, as it’s on the other side of the room. It’s long winded to explain, but fairly simple in practice.
So yeah, mixed result really - it’s saved me a few quid, but it’d be nice if it was more consistent.
It did also have a weird effect in that it caused me to strain my knee. Basically my bed is very low down (it’s sort of a futon thing) so I have to get in/out in a specific way. Well, moving to the other side means I’ve had to do all that in a different way, and I made a mess of it and strained my knee.
The timing of that wasn’t brilliant, as I was off to Liverpool in a couple of days, which I’ll talk more about on Thursday.
I’m pretty sure I mentioned this before I went, but if not, basically he’s increasing my rent by £5 a month and for that I’m getting a radiator in my bedsit area. It’s plumbed into my landlord’s heating, so I don’t have any control over it (well, I can turn it on/off and I can adjust the “balance” - whatever that is) but it’s better than an increase and getting nothing in return.
Last week was therefore the first week I’ve been experiencing it and the results are mixed, if I’m honest.
The weather has been quite mild, so it's difficult to know just how much they have their radiators on, but there’s a bit of an “all or nothing” effect. When the radiator is on, it’s very effective, but it doesn’t really come on when I would have it on.
It’s been okay in the morning (a little later than I get up) but it soon warms the place up when it’s on. In the evening, it’s on before I come back, so I get back to a somewhat warm flat. However, it’s a bit unpredictable if it’ll stay on all evening or just for an hour or so.
So some days it turns off and I have to put my own radiator on, other nights it’s stayed on right until I go to bed.
The effectiveness of the radiator is partly a function of its size. It’s a lot bigger than I was expecting, which means it really pumps it out when it’s on, but it also takes up a heck of a lot of wall space, which I wasn’t expecting. Indeed, I’ve ended up re-arranging everything and moving my bed across to the other side of the room.
I’ve still got the other radiator of course, and so my bed is up against that, as it’s on the other side of the room. It’s long winded to explain, but fairly simple in practice.
So yeah, mixed result really - it’s saved me a few quid, but it’d be nice if it was more consistent.
It did also have a weird effect in that it caused me to strain my knee. Basically my bed is very low down (it’s sort of a futon thing) so I have to get in/out in a specific way. Well, moving to the other side means I’ve had to do all that in a different way, and I made a mess of it and strained my knee.
The timing of that wasn’t brilliant, as I was off to Liverpool in a couple of days, which I’ll talk more about on Thursday.
Monday, 14 November 2011
abu dhabi don't
The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix this last weekend.
On previous occasions it’s been horribly dull. Last year it was where the championship was decided and that, to be frank, was mainly because neither Fernando Alonso, Mark Webber nor Lewis Hamilton could make overtakes that they needed to.
As such, I was pretty much not expecting very much from the race. They’d introduced two DRS zones, both of which were pretty big which was clearly an acknowledgement that overtaking was nearly impossible. Indeed, they actually extended one of the zones for fear it wouldn’t help.
In the end the race was... okay.
The first third of the race had quite a lot of interest, but once things had settled down there was very little action. My guess is there was more of interest further down the pack, but we didn’t get to see to much.
So I wouldn’t say it was the worst race this year, but it certainly wasn’t the greatest either.
I’m also a bit worried about the tyre issue. The teams seem to have started to get a better handle on them, as you'd expect, but also, Pirelli have been talking about making the softer tyres more durable for next year, which doesn’t bode well. I was hoping they'd make some decisions that would throw another cat amongst the pigeons. If they go for more “normal” tyres it could make next year less interesting.
Perhaps the most interesting thing in the race actually happened right at the beginning, when Sebastian Vettel seemed to have a puncture (there wasn’t a very good shot of it), which caused him to spin off and by the time he’d gotten back to the pits the back end of his car was trashed, so he had to retire.
This opened things up for a bit of a different result, but it also really underlined just how reliable the Red Bulls have been this year. I’m pretty sure this has been Seb’s first retirement all year.
Reliability nowadays is remarkable - you very rarely see cars breaking down any more. Back when I first started watching F1 you regularly used to see more than half of the grid braking down.
Given the extremes they deal with and the levels of precision required, it’s really remarkable.
On previous occasions it’s been horribly dull. Last year it was where the championship was decided and that, to be frank, was mainly because neither Fernando Alonso, Mark Webber nor Lewis Hamilton could make overtakes that they needed to.
As such, I was pretty much not expecting very much from the race. They’d introduced two DRS zones, both of which were pretty big which was clearly an acknowledgement that overtaking was nearly impossible. Indeed, they actually extended one of the zones for fear it wouldn’t help.
In the end the race was... okay.
The first third of the race had quite a lot of interest, but once things had settled down there was very little action. My guess is there was more of interest further down the pack, but we didn’t get to see to much.
So I wouldn’t say it was the worst race this year, but it certainly wasn’t the greatest either.
I’m also a bit worried about the tyre issue. The teams seem to have started to get a better handle on them, as you'd expect, but also, Pirelli have been talking about making the softer tyres more durable for next year, which doesn’t bode well. I was hoping they'd make some decisions that would throw another cat amongst the pigeons. If they go for more “normal” tyres it could make next year less interesting.
Perhaps the most interesting thing in the race actually happened right at the beginning, when Sebastian Vettel seemed to have a puncture (there wasn’t a very good shot of it), which caused him to spin off and by the time he’d gotten back to the pits the back end of his car was trashed, so he had to retire.
This opened things up for a bit of a different result, but it also really underlined just how reliable the Red Bulls have been this year. I’m pretty sure this has been Seb’s first retirement all year.
Reliability nowadays is remarkable - you very rarely see cars breaking down any more. Back when I first started watching F1 you regularly used to see more than half of the grid braking down.
Given the extremes they deal with and the levels of precision required, it’s really remarkable.
Friday, 11 November 2011
abu dhabi du
It's the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix this weekend.
I can't say I'm particularly looking forward to it as it's not really produced any classics so far. It's one of the newer races and it's also one of the duller ones.
From memory it's held in the evening, so it starts out fairly light but the sun sets during the race and it's dark at the end. This doesn't really add much to the race, but I guess it's something different.
It's also the circuit where it goes under the weird hotel which has loads of glowing lights on it. Also, the exit from the pits is a tunnel. Again, neither really add anything to the race, but it's something a bit different.
It's also the second to last grand prix. The season is way too long this year - the last race is Brazil, which is usually a good race, but it's way out at the end of November and the new season starts mid-March next year.
I appreciate with F1 being a properly global sport you can go on for a long time, but I think it's kinda reached a maximum length this year. Also, by adding more races you actually amplify the effect of dominance. So this year there have been lots of races where Vettel has already won the title.
To be honest, I don't think it matters as much in F1 - they still want to win each race, but the heat does go out of it a little.
Other plans for the weekend are... to be honest, I'm not sure. I know I need to do a big shop and one of the things I did do when I got back of holiday was identify a bunch of stuff for e-baying.
In fact I'm actually almost out of stuff I could put on e-bay in the shed. Indeed, I've actually got loads of empty stacking boxes in the shed that I've positioned to give the illusion that the space is has still got loads in it, but actually they're mostly empty.
Well, I say that - there's still quite a bit I could get rid of, it's just it would take quite a lot of sorting out, and I'd say half of what's left is really only tip-worthy if I was forced to dispose of it.
Also I've actually cheated. I've brought all of my manga in and stacked it up on top of my smaller set of shelves.
I do actually want to sell most of these titles, it's just that I'm either waiting for them to finish (which could take a few years in some cases :/) or to get a good chunk that I can sell as a batch (1-10 say) and then when new volumes turn up I'll sell them individually.
This doesn't get me such good prices, but it reduces the amount of stuff I've got hanging about.
Oh, I also made a bit of a decision - I want to rip some of the DVDs I've got so that I can get the originals on e-bay. Having spent quite a lot of time recently sorting through things there's a lot that clearly isn't going to be of "classic - must keep" status so I think I'll rip them and sell them.
That does mean I need to work out a quick, easy and efficient way of doing that. And of course it means there's a weird bit of transference going on - I won't be doing what I really need to (watching stuff) but I'll still be able to sell it :/. Also, I'm going to spend hours (?) ripping it when I could be watching it... ?
I can't say I'm particularly looking forward to it as it's not really produced any classics so far. It's one of the newer races and it's also one of the duller ones.
From memory it's held in the evening, so it starts out fairly light but the sun sets during the race and it's dark at the end. This doesn't really add much to the race, but I guess it's something different.
It's also the circuit where it goes under the weird hotel which has loads of glowing lights on it. Also, the exit from the pits is a tunnel. Again, neither really add anything to the race, but it's something a bit different.
It's also the second to last grand prix. The season is way too long this year - the last race is Brazil, which is usually a good race, but it's way out at the end of November and the new season starts mid-March next year.
I appreciate with F1 being a properly global sport you can go on for a long time, but I think it's kinda reached a maximum length this year. Also, by adding more races you actually amplify the effect of dominance. So this year there have been lots of races where Vettel has already won the title.
To be honest, I don't think it matters as much in F1 - they still want to win each race, but the heat does go out of it a little.
Other plans for the weekend are... to be honest, I'm not sure. I know I need to do a big shop and one of the things I did do when I got back of holiday was identify a bunch of stuff for e-baying.
In fact I'm actually almost out of stuff I could put on e-bay in the shed. Indeed, I've actually got loads of empty stacking boxes in the shed that I've positioned to give the illusion that the space is has still got loads in it, but actually they're mostly empty.
Well, I say that - there's still quite a bit I could get rid of, it's just it would take quite a lot of sorting out, and I'd say half of what's left is really only tip-worthy if I was forced to dispose of it.
Also I've actually cheated. I've brought all of my manga in and stacked it up on top of my smaller set of shelves.
I do actually want to sell most of these titles, it's just that I'm either waiting for them to finish (which could take a few years in some cases :/) or to get a good chunk that I can sell as a batch (1-10 say) and then when new volumes turn up I'll sell them individually.
This doesn't get me such good prices, but it reduces the amount of stuff I've got hanging about.
Oh, I also made a bit of a decision - I want to rip some of the DVDs I've got so that I can get the originals on e-bay. Having spent quite a lot of time recently sorting through things there's a lot that clearly isn't going to be of "classic - must keep" status so I think I'll rip them and sell them.
That does mean I need to work out a quick, easy and efficient way of doing that. And of course it means there's a weird bit of transference going on - I won't be doing what I really need to (watching stuff) but I'll still be able to sell it :/. Also, I'm going to spend hours (?) ripping it when I could be watching it... ?
Wednesday, 9 November 2011
indian grand prix
The Indian Grand Prix was on while I was away.
In fact it was on while I was at my Dads and so I watched it down there.
I have to confess it wasn't the greatest of races - there was very little overtaking (mostly the rubbish DRS type overtaking) and not much really seemed to happen. I think there were a couple of reasons for this dullness.
Firstly, and probably most crucially, Pirelli brought the wrong tyres. They basically said they were being conservative, so the tyres they brought were harder than they really needed to be. This meant they lasted ages and it kinda took us back to the situation for the last few years.
In a way this was a good reminder of the great things the Pirelli tyres have done for the racing this year, but in a more important way it meant that they didn't really have to worry about the tyres and could all just do one stop pretty much when they wanted too.
So next year a much less conservative approach please.
Another problem was the incredible dust. To be fair the circuit is new, so a bit of construction dust is to be expected, but I also think they've built it in a place that's quite dry and dusty, which bodes less well for future years.
The dust meant that going off line (which is what you have to do to overtake) quickly coated your tyres in dust, meaning you'd loose grip and therefore struggle to overtake.
What they need to do next year is get some of those jet washers and clean it up a bit (they even have these at Silverstone).
Another problem, I think, was it's yet another circuit where they've gone for gigantic straights. I really don't understand the obsession with giant straights. I mean, I guess they're okay for more normal cars which take a while to get up to top speed, but maximum straight line sped (vmax) s achieved incredibly quickly in F1 cars (and most other formulas).
I mean that's the point - they're very fast, very light cars, so they can hit top speed quickly. The bit that's interesting is the corners - cornering speed is where you gain real lap time and it's also where F1 cars excel. Nothing corners like an F1 car.
And of course if you're going to have some huge straights you reduce the number of corners.
Another issue was that I think they overhyped the circuit. It's brand new and it's Tilka, who has built most of the new circuit, most of which are rubbish, but everyone was saying this layout was great and there'd be loads of overtaking, but there wasn't
To be fait it did look like an interesting circuit and elevation and super wide corners designed to help overtaking, yet in the end it just didn't seem to work.
Well it was only the first year and so perhaps next year will be better.
Note that tomorrow I'm away in Liverpool all day (it's going to be a really long day) so no post tomorrow.
In fact it was on while I was at my Dads and so I watched it down there.
I have to confess it wasn't the greatest of races - there was very little overtaking (mostly the rubbish DRS type overtaking) and not much really seemed to happen. I think there were a couple of reasons for this dullness.
Firstly, and probably most crucially, Pirelli brought the wrong tyres. They basically said they were being conservative, so the tyres they brought were harder than they really needed to be. This meant they lasted ages and it kinda took us back to the situation for the last few years.
In a way this was a good reminder of the great things the Pirelli tyres have done for the racing this year, but in a more important way it meant that they didn't really have to worry about the tyres and could all just do one stop pretty much when they wanted too.
So next year a much less conservative approach please.
Another problem was the incredible dust. To be fair the circuit is new, so a bit of construction dust is to be expected, but I also think they've built it in a place that's quite dry and dusty, which bodes less well for future years.
The dust meant that going off line (which is what you have to do to overtake) quickly coated your tyres in dust, meaning you'd loose grip and therefore struggle to overtake.
What they need to do next year is get some of those jet washers and clean it up a bit (they even have these at Silverstone).
Another problem, I think, was it's yet another circuit where they've gone for gigantic straights. I really don't understand the obsession with giant straights. I mean, I guess they're okay for more normal cars which take a while to get up to top speed, but maximum straight line sped (vmax) s achieved incredibly quickly in F1 cars (and most other formulas).
I mean that's the point - they're very fast, very light cars, so they can hit top speed quickly. The bit that's interesting is the corners - cornering speed is where you gain real lap time and it's also where F1 cars excel. Nothing corners like an F1 car.
And of course if you're going to have some huge straights you reduce the number of corners.
Another issue was that I think they overhyped the circuit. It's brand new and it's Tilka, who has built most of the new circuit, most of which are rubbish, but everyone was saying this layout was great and there'd be loads of overtaking, but there wasn't
To be fait it did look like an interesting circuit and elevation and super wide corners designed to help overtaking, yet in the end it just didn't seem to work.
Well it was only the first year and so perhaps next year will be better.
Note that tomorrow I'm away in Liverpool all day (it's going to be a really long day) so no post tomorrow.
Tuesday, 8 November 2011
no water
So I got back last night and discovered there was no water.
I knocked on my landlord's door, thinking he may have turned it off and forgotten to turn it back on (I'll explain why in a future blog post), but actually it turned out there's a burst main and there's no water for the whole street. It had, apparently, been off for more than four hours at that point already.
Why does this stuff always happen to me at the worst possible times?
I mean, I've lived there six years and at no point has the water been shut off (the heater for the hot water has failed occasionally, but that's it) but now, the very day before I have an important meeting the water is totally gone.
And that's the thing I missed.
Water to drink being gone was annoying (I like to drink quite a lot of water) but copable with - I have bottled water, milk and other stuff - but water to do things like wash up, have a shower with, shave with and even use to clean your teeth is really difficult to replace. And as for flushing the loo... well.
But the real key is this was happening the night before I've got an important meeting. I mean, why now? The odds must be astronomical.
And given the amount I sweat during the night I couldn't really get away with not washing at all.
I decided to leave a tap on so that if and when it did come back on and luckily at about 9:00 it sputtered into life.
Of course the water that came out of it was a horrible muddy brown, and the hot water had been emptied so that glugged and gurgled as it filled up for several hours. However, in the morning I was able to take a shower and do some of the other water dependent things, so that was good.
The cold water in the morning wasn't brown any more, but it was full of bubbles and it tasted a bit funny. Hopefully I can run it through a bit tonight and it will clean up and be okay.
I guess somewhere in there is a big indicator of my personality - my reaction was "why is it always me? and why now?" but I could be reacting in a "lucky it got fixed in time" way.
I knocked on my landlord's door, thinking he may have turned it off and forgotten to turn it back on (I'll explain why in a future blog post), but actually it turned out there's a burst main and there's no water for the whole street. It had, apparently, been off for more than four hours at that point already.
Why does this stuff always happen to me at the worst possible times?
I mean, I've lived there six years and at no point has the water been shut off (the heater for the hot water has failed occasionally, but that's it) but now, the very day before I have an important meeting the water is totally gone.
And that's the thing I missed.
Water to drink being gone was annoying (I like to drink quite a lot of water) but copable with - I have bottled water, milk and other stuff - but water to do things like wash up, have a shower with, shave with and even use to clean your teeth is really difficult to replace. And as for flushing the loo... well.
But the real key is this was happening the night before I've got an important meeting. I mean, why now? The odds must be astronomical.
And given the amount I sweat during the night I couldn't really get away with not washing at all.
I decided to leave a tap on so that if and when it did come back on and luckily at about 9:00 it sputtered into life.
Of course the water that came out of it was a horrible muddy brown, and the hot water had been emptied so that glugged and gurgled as it filled up for several hours. However, in the morning I was able to take a shower and do some of the other water dependent things, so that was good.
The cold water in the morning wasn't brown any more, but it was full of bubbles and it tasted a bit funny. Hopefully I can run it through a bit tonight and it will clean up and be okay.
I guess somewhere in there is a big indicator of my personality - my reaction was "why is it always me? and why now?" but I could be reacting in a "lucky it got fixed in time" way.
Monday, 7 November 2011
holiday
So, back to work today.
Can't say I enjoyed it.
I dunno, normally I'm pretty happy to go back, but this time it just felt like the worst thing ever.
Part of the problem was that the holiday just flew by. It really doesn't feel like I've been away for more than a day or two, but I've actually been off for more than a week.
The first part of the holiday as spent at my Dads - Friday to Monday, and I think this was too long. Not that I don't like seeing him, it's just it meant that the Friday and Monday were pretty much right offs.
And when I visit my dad it doesn't really feel like holiday proper. So, in a way I sort of had a weekend at my Dad's and then a four day holiday, making it not feel like long enough.
Anther reason is that the holiday wasn't really very good. The weather was a bit meh (cloudy and drizzly and foggy for most of it and it was just the wrong side of chilly) and I didn't really seem to enjoy it very much. I kept thinking about work stuff and as I say I "lost" a few days.
Usually I go at the beginning of October / end September and the weather is much better - just the right side of chilly, usually at least a few sunny days.
Also, the clocks changed while I was on holiday. While this technically gave me an extra hour, I always find it a confusing experience when the clocks change. Also, it meant that it suddenly switched to getting dark really early and that made all the days feel very short.
And I didn't really seem to get any of the other stuff done - I didn't pre-write any blog entries, didn't watch hardly anything on DVD, didn't read a single page of any books. The only thing I did do was read plenty of manga and that was silly in a way as it's not really something I struggle to do normally.
One thing I would say is the walking and diet went pretty well. This time I'd planned to eat some specific bad things (clotted cream teas, 1 Burger King meal and 1 McDonalds) and I think because I'd included them in the plan I didn't go nuts on the other days. I also walked loads and so still managed to loose about 2 pounds despite eating those bits of rubbish.
When I got back things seemed to be manic - it took ages to unpack and there was loads of stuff for me to catch up on. Plus it was a cleaning weekend, so that was on top of all the regular stuff.
I've also come back on a Monday so I've the prospect of a full week at work. I usually try to stagger holiday so it's a half week once I'm back, but I don't have the days to spare this year. That's partly because of the Grand Prix holiday, which, although greatly enjoyable, has kinda made a bit of a mess of my holiday timings for the rest f the year.
I'd also kinda hoped that someone who was filling in for me while I was away would clear up a few niggling jobs I haven't had the time to deal with, but when I got back I found they hadn't done any of them. I mean, I don't blame them, it's just it would have been nice if at least a few had been done and I could focus on the bigger stuff (which didn't really seem to have advanced any further either, which I'm less pleased about).
To be frank, I'm in a bit of a "roll on Christmas" mood. I think I may take quite a long Chrimbo holiday this year.
Thursday, 27 October 2011
last day
So today is my last day in the office for a while.
I'm off on holiday, but it's nothing spectacular - I'm going down to Devon. Initially I'll be seeing my dad over the weekend and then I'm booked in to a travel lodge until the end of the week.
IT was my dad's birthday at the beginning of the month, which is why I want to see him, but I've also not seen him since the British Grand Prix back in July, so that will be nice. It's also a Grand Prix weekend, with the Indian Grand Prix on.
India is new this year, so it will be interesting to see what the circuit is like and how the racing is. Both of the championships are well over after Red Bull wrapped up the constructors championship at Korea. Now it's all just about who can win the races. Some people tend to think as soon as the season's over that's it, but of course in reality, the drivers and teams want to win every race they go to - otherwise why turn up?
Plus, since there are very few rule changes next season, it follows the cars won't be hugely different and it will be important to keep momentum up for the beginning o f the next season.
Anyway, after that I'll stay in a travelodge for a few days. The idea there is I'm going to do lots of walking. This is the same pattern I've done a few times now and it works quite well, so long as I can resist the temptation of eating lots of junk food. I mean, I'll have a couple of treats, but if I can avoid eating junk continuously I should be able to concentrate on loosing a few pounds.
I will also use the opportunity to watch a load of DVDs and read a bunch of manga. I'm hoping that I'll be able to watch a few films mainly so that I can then e-bay them when I get back. t would be nice to eat a chunk of unwatched stuff away.
Also, while I'm away my landlord is apparently going to install a new radiator in the flat. The idea is they're going to run the pipes across from his place and put the radiator in the living room/bed area.
The hope is this will cut a big chunk out of my heating costs (now that it's turned chilly I'm starting to put the radiator on), although I'm not getting it for free - it's costing me £5 extra month in rent, and while that may seem a bargain, it's not quite as good as that, because of course during spring, summer and early autumn I don't use heating at all and of course the rise is across the full year, not just the winter months.
Still, it should represent better value at least.
I think he's also a bit concerned about the possibility of pipes bursting. By putting a bit of heating it should stave off the cold a bit, so it's a preventative thing - clearing up after flooding would not be cheap.
I'm off on holiday, but it's nothing spectacular - I'm going down to Devon. Initially I'll be seeing my dad over the weekend and then I'm booked in to a travel lodge until the end of the week.
IT was my dad's birthday at the beginning of the month, which is why I want to see him, but I've also not seen him since the British Grand Prix back in July, so that will be nice. It's also a Grand Prix weekend, with the Indian Grand Prix on.
India is new this year, so it will be interesting to see what the circuit is like and how the racing is. Both of the championships are well over after Red Bull wrapped up the constructors championship at Korea. Now it's all just about who can win the races. Some people tend to think as soon as the season's over that's it, but of course in reality, the drivers and teams want to win every race they go to - otherwise why turn up?
Plus, since there are very few rule changes next season, it follows the cars won't be hugely different and it will be important to keep momentum up for the beginning o f the next season.
Anyway, after that I'll stay in a travelodge for a few days. The idea there is I'm going to do lots of walking. This is the same pattern I've done a few times now and it works quite well, so long as I can resist the temptation of eating lots of junk food. I mean, I'll have a couple of treats, but if I can avoid eating junk continuously I should be able to concentrate on loosing a few pounds.
I will also use the opportunity to watch a load of DVDs and read a bunch of manga. I'm hoping that I'll be able to watch a few films mainly so that I can then e-bay them when I get back. t would be nice to eat a chunk of unwatched stuff away.
Also, while I'm away my landlord is apparently going to install a new radiator in the flat. The idea is they're going to run the pipes across from his place and put the radiator in the living room/bed area.
The hope is this will cut a big chunk out of my heating costs (now that it's turned chilly I'm starting to put the radiator on), although I'm not getting it for free - it's costing me £5 extra month in rent, and while that may seem a bargain, it's not quite as good as that, because of course during spring, summer and early autumn I don't use heating at all and of course the rise is across the full year, not just the winter months.
Still, it should represent better value at least.
I think he's also a bit concerned about the possibility of pipes bursting. By putting a bit of heating it should stave off the cold a bit, so it's a preventative thing - clearing up after flooding would not be cheap.
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